


Rel

by TranslatorError



Series: Aiballshipping Week 2021 [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Aiballshipping Week, M/M, Season 3 Spoilers, also canon typical descriptions of traumatic events, content warning for the last two lines of fic, nothing heavy but vague descriptions of blood, set post canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29887803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TranslatorError/pseuds/TranslatorError
Summary: //Spoilers for Season 3. Set post canon. Content warning for the end - read the tags for info.Clarion skies beckon him forwards. In soot, the rubble of dreams loitering around, he takes care not to trip over mechanical debris. Seraphs make no trumpeting call of the end. He had survived. At what cost?Written for Day 2 of Aiball week: Memories
Relationships: Ai | Ignis/Fujiki Yuusaku
Series: Aiballshipping Week 2021 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2197494
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Rel

Clarion skies beckon him forwards. In soot, the rubble of dreams loitering around, he takes care not to trip over mechanical debris. Seraphs make no trumpeting call of the end. He had survived. At what cost?

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In therapy, Yusaku didn't recover. The time he lost couldn't be made up by the words of mentors who knew not the horrors of being strapped to a machine, being forced to play to survive. That wasn't to say he hadn't learned anything in rehabilitation; their empty promises of healing stuck with him, became the words he spoke to Ai on numerous times, warped into tangible irony he could taste on his tongue.

He couldn't remember which social worker recommended art therapy. All their faces meshed together, collaged clashing features into something grotesque, and he often repressed the few faces he could piece together. Better to bury the hatchet than to chop down a tree. Or, for what it's worth, better to paint the tree in shades of greens and browns to represent how time won't pass for him. Poetic stuff, but not the type that'd help ease the shakes he got around electric poles and towers above. Paintbrushes don't quell tremors brought on from going hungry.

Not to say Yusaku was a slacker, but few things stayed permanently from the mandatory classes he endured. One was that of duel theory, the idea that dueling was a form of communication. An artform, like the pen to the poet, that translated thoughts and feelings in a way more subtle than dialogue could suggest. Yusaku didn't like dueling. Only dueled when he had to, and only dueled to win. Yet he could somewhat understand that sentiment, had felt that urge to talk through the only medium he had and felt the need to be understood. On all occasions, he wasn't.

Revolver gave up the chance to go for a new future. Shook off Yusaku's hand, and that was fine. Though he'd never admit it, Ryoken was a victim in his own right. His path forward would take him wherever he needs to go. Be it against the principles Yusaku stood for, they would clash again.

Such was the nature of things.

For Ai -

On stone and cobble they faced off against each other. With the Earth as a backdrop, their clandestine duel took place. Neither wanted to win, nor to lose. It was etched in the stopped time that one of them would fall. Simulations decreed it, the same simulations that pitted them against Ryoken, Kogami against SOL Tech, Lightning against the world. Resultingly, as it always were, Yusaku was victorious.

Victorious in glory alone, as his empty arms scooped the air in desperation.

Had Ai been a passive voice then, he would've found the sight of data transmission a masterpiece. Fluttering petals of code scattering into the atmosphere. Contributing to the ecosystem of the landscape in a way that screamed inhuman, that screamed peace for the greater good. Broad brushstrokes on wet canvas as everything Yusaku had disappeared from that room.

Ai was a throwaway nickname, an allusion to his origins as an artificial intelligence. One capable of free will and intellect. Yusaku couldn't have cared less at the time if he were dumb as rocks or the next SOL Tech CEO. He served a purpose, so he was put to work. Time moves forward, Ryoken sails off, they part and return and Yusaku gets a little attached. Didn't intend to, really. That's what made the trade-off so hard - that his last conversation with Ai was a rejection of his ideals. Ai chose to die for him, rather than to live with him, and damn if that didn't kill him inside.

\------

Death isn’t a concept Ai’s very familiar with. Ignis could dissipate, evaporate into nothing, and he’d seen that first hand with the loss of his family to the hands of Bohman. Oh, how he wanted to fade into nothing as it dawned on him, how little time he would have with the people he cared about.

If even Ignis, even beings with their existences simulated and advanced to the point hunger, thirst, touch are unnecessary – if even they were fallible to the hands of fate, what could stop Yusaku, someone so so human and so vulnerable getting swallowed in the dirt as time wore on?

To him – to Ai, who owed Yusaku the world and wanted to give him more – it wasn’t an option to lose him. Had coexistence been an option he’d happily take it, anything to remain with his partner, but everything pointed otherwise. Ai living meant Yusaku dying at some point. That was an unacceptable reality.

Ai means to love people. Above all, the passer-by’s in the street, the Café Nagi customers, the grannies who seemed fond of his origin – Ai loved Yusaku, so wholly and so desperately, that even nonexistence was an inevitable conclusion to their love story. One he welcomed, for the satisfaction of knowing Yusaku would live for him.

\------

Elysian Fields was where he found him at last. Scraps of data clustered like puzzle pieces lay neatly on a table akin to the altar where he acquired his Cyberse deck. The fields were lush with blooming flowers and herbs, and Yusaku had to wonder if this was the Cyberse World Ai dreamed of. He could picture Ai and Flame in the Hyacinths, talking amongst themselves while Lightning and Windy sat a fair distance away. Close enough they kept in each other's sights, but far enough that any conversations were muddled. Quite similar to Windy's version, though Yusaku couldn't exactly prove its accuracies to the real thing.

Were Yusaku a painter, this was the type of scenery he would be enamoured with.

He'd built his Ignis up block by block, code by code, patching in chunks he'd found strung in areas of VRAINS he had no reason to be in. Took him back, Yusaku thought, to the times where Ai was on the run and Yusaku was a paragon of vengeance. How his tune changed as he healed, suffered, and recovered some more. Neither of them were going to have to run from now on. If they were headed anywhere? It'd be hand in hand, feet to the pavement. Together, as it should have been.

Together, as it never was.

Their reunion was painful. Sharp words daggered against each other, Ai insistent his presence brought upon calamity. Like that would stop Yusaku. But they never argued for long, and Yusaku was swept in a bonecrushing hug that he couldn't help but reciprocate, tearstricken and tired in the way no sleep would ever cure. Purple eyebags, mimicking the purple his Ignis was known for, painted his skin in harsh hues. Ai was back, and that was all that mattered.

\------

Except - the problem, when you have an android known for his association with an egomaniac AI that tried to wipe out humanity - peace didn't come cheap. Tracking down a human who sheds their identity can be hard. Gunning for data that, thanks to the loss of Earth, has patterns recognised by organisations of interest - well, that's a cake walk.

Ai had sworn, long before his duel with Yusaku, that he wouldn't lose the person he loved most. Yet he lost that duel, and would lose Yusaku, because human lives aren't permanent. Playmaker's data would remain on the VRAINS network for years after he passed, but Yusaku would be bones in a casket by the time server data resets. Ai knows this, it was part of why he'd been so willing to go down for Yusaku first, if only to spare himself the grief of eternal life without his origin.

That wasn't how the simulations went.

Yusaku, covered in sickly red, choking words to form his epitaph? Play by play of exactly what Lightning had shown him. Memories of warfare shot through his skull.

Ai wept, clinging to a shirt too slick for comfort, and cursed the world once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, uh, didn't expect it to get to over 1k. 
> 
> I really like the ambiguity of season 3. Have a few fics planned about it, including my big bang project, and I wanted to explore Yusaku's thoughts on things. Spiralled into Ai's thoughts, then boom. Bad end meetups.
> 
> Titles have come from songs from The Oral Cigarettes. Would very much recommend - Rel hits hard for touching on grief and memories of time past.


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